The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.

Here, then, is the point at which I see the new mission of the librarian rise up incomparably higher than all those preceding. Up until the present, the librarian has been principally occupied with the book as a thing, as a material object. From now on he must give his attention to the book as a living function. He must become a policeman, master of the raging book.

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal.

There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.

Today violence is the rhetoric of the period.

In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves.